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The List: The World’s Toughest Survivors
by brendan leonard on November 20, 2012
Was traffic unbearable this morning? Boss not appreciative of your work? Did that damn barista put too much foam on your latte?Cool, maybe some of these folks will sympathize with the hard day you’ve had. Like the Chilean miners who spent 69 days underground after the mine they were working in collapsed, or the guy with the broken leg who crawled five miles back to camp after he was left for dead.
How tough are you? Probably not this tough:
Ernest Shackleton
When the going got tough: In 1914, Shackleton’s crew intended to attempt the first Trans-Antarctic Expedition, a crossing of Antarctica over the south pole. Then their ship, the Endurance, was trapped in pack ice in the Weddell Sea, stranding 28 men.
The tough: Hung out for nine months, but then the ice crushed their ship, so they took lifeboats and camped on the ice for six months eating seal meat and eventually the expedition dogs, until an ice floe suddenly split and they were forced to take the lifeboats to nearby Elephant Island, in freezing water and -20 F temps. From there, Shackleton and five men took four weeks’ worth of supplies and launched a 22.5-foot lifeboat for an 800-mile trip to South Georgia Island, where they hoped to get help at a whaling village. After 16 days of navigating based on dead reckoning, the men landed on South Georgia, but on the wrong (unpopulated) side. Shackleton and two other men crossed the then-unmapped, unexplored island in 36 hours. After several attempts over the course of three months, Shackleton eventually returned to Elephant Island to rescue the rest of his crew. All crew members survived. The first Antarctic crossing would not happen for another 40 years.
Aron Ralston
When the going got tough: In 2003, Ralston was descending Blue John Canyon, a technical slot canyon in remote southern Utah, when a chockstone shifted, smashing his right arm and trapping him.
The tough: Stood in place with his arm stuck behind the boulder for 127 straight hours, running out of food and water and eventually drinking his own urine. Cut his own arm off with a dull, cheap knockoff multitool, rappelled with one arm, and hiked many miles out of the canyon.
Joe Simpson
When the going got tough: In 1985, Simpson and Simon Yates climbed the then-unclimbed west face of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes and, on the descent with more than 3,000 feet to get to safety, Simpson slipped and broke his leg. Yates tied their ropes together and began to lower Simpson, which went well until he unknowingly lowered Simpson off a cliff. Hanging free from the face, Simpson tried to communicate with Yates, who couldn’t hear him in a worsening storm. Pinned in his stance and slipping, Yates eventually cut the rope between the two, dropping Simpson 150 feet into a crevasse below. Thinking his friend was dead, Yates dug a snow cave for the night, and descended and returned to camp the next day. Simpson, however, was not dead.
The tough: Unable to climb out of the crevasse, Simpson rappelled deeper into the glacier, where he was able to escape through a small ice roof. Then he spent three days crawling and butt-sliding the five miles back to camp without food and water, at times hallucinating.
Beck Weathers
When the going got tough: Weathers attempted to summit Mount Everest in 1996, part of the fateful disaster that year. He was unable to see and stopped at the South Col, waiting for guide Rob Hall to return and take him back down the mountain. But Hall was stranded higher on the mountain and never returned.
The tough: Open-bivied high on the mountain in a blizzard. His exposed hands and feet were severely frostbitten, but he was able to make his way back to Camp IV, where Anatoli Boukreev found him and alerted fellow climbers to put Weathers in a tent. Seeing the condition Weathers was in, the climbers thought he would certainly die and tried to make him comfortable in his last hours. He spent the night in the tent, unable to feed himself, drink water, or rearrange the sleeping bags he had been given to keep warm. The next day, he was found still alive, and was helped to walk to Camp II. After one of the highest-altitude helicopter rescues ever, Weathers had his right hand, all the fingers on his left hand, parts of both feet, and his nose amputated.
“Los 33” Chilean Miners
When the going got tough: In 2010, a copper and gold mine near Copiapo, Chile, caved in, trapping 33 miners 2,300 feet underground.
The tough: Waited. They made their emergency rations, intended to last two to three days, last two weeks. Seventeen days after the collapse, a drilling team started to bore holes to attempt a rescue, and when their drill bit came back up from one of the holes, they found a note attached to it, reading “”Estamos bien en el refugio, los 33″ (“We are well in the shelter, the 33″). The men organized and decided on a democratic, one-man/one-vote system, and worked together to keep morale up. After 68 days underground, rescue efforts paid off and a capsule was sent down to retrieve the first of the miners. Over the next 24 hours, all of the men were returned to the surface. All survived without long-term health effects.
The Three Mexican Fishermen
When the going got tough: In October 2005, Lucio Rendón, Salvador Ordóñez, and Jesús Vidaña and two other men set out from San Blas, a small Mexican fishing village near Puerto Vallarta, in a 28-foot shark fishing boat without a radio. They ran out of fuel and drifted out to sea. For nine months.
The tough: Drank rainwater, caught fish with engine cables, ate raw seagulls, played air guitar, sang ballads, and tossed overboard the bodies of the two other crewmembers, who they say refused to eat raw fish and starved to death. In August 2006, a Taiwanese fishing boat saw the boat on its radar and went to investigate, then pulled the men onboard.
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